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If empathy scores correlate better with therapy effectiveness than training, does the existence of a mental health crisis suggest a general decrease in availabl

If empathy scores correlate better with therapy effectiveness than training, does the existence of a mental health crisis suggest a general decrease in available empathetic interlocutors throughout society? Are people having fewer empathetic relationships or encounters in their daily life than in the past?

ramesh31 3y ago
>If empathy scores correlate better with therapy effectiveness than training, does the existence of a mental health crisis suggest a general decrease in available empathetic interlocutors throughout society? I think that's a great insight which tracks well to my anecdotal experience from the last 10 years. Dating apps have turned potential partners into Pokemon on your phone to be collected. Doordash has stripped delivery drivers of all humanity and abstracted them away into mindless automata. Social media has gamified and commodified outrage and hatred on a global scale. At every corner you look today, the bonds of human society have been disolved and replaced with pay-gated third party API calls. And this mindset has extended like a cancer to all aspects of life. Even "therapy" itself conforms to this. What was once something relied upon friends and family has been outsourced to the "heres my money, now fix my problem" mentality. Corporate greed has effectively atomized us in a way that 20th century totalitarian states could have only imagined. And once we've been atomized, it becomes trivial to sell basic human experiences back to us in a nice neat package. Empathy becomes just another service you can summon with your phone, so why bother practicing it?
- photoGrant 3y ago
  I hung and agreed on every word but specifically; > Empathy becomes just another service you can summon with your phone, so why bother practicing it? Yikes. So true.
benterix 3y ago
It might be. And as people get more and more lonely, the problem gets more serious, as statistically speaking the amount of empathetic interlocutors you meet decreases.

ramesh31 3y ago

>If empathy scores correlate better with therapy effectiveness than training, does the existence of a mental health crisis suggest a general decrease in available empathetic interlocutors throughout society? I think that's a great insight which tracks well to my anecdotal experience from the last 10 years. Dating apps have turned potential partners into Pokemon on your phone to be collected. Doordash has stripped delivery drivers of all humanity and abstracted them away into mindless automata. Social media has gamified and commodified outrage and hatred on a global scale. At every corner you look today, the bonds of human society have been disolved and replaced with pay-gated third party API calls. And this mindset has extended like a cancer to all aspects of life. Even "therapy" itself conforms to this. What was once something relied upon friends and family has been outsourced to the "heres my money, now fix my problem" mentality. Corporate greed has effectively atomized us in a way that 20th century totalitarian states could have only imagined. And once we've been atomized, it becomes trivial to sell basic human experiences back to us in a nice neat package. Empathy becomes just another service you can summon with your phone, so why bother practicing it?

photoGrant 3y ago
I hung and agreed on every word but specifically; > Empathy becomes just another service you can summon with your phone, so why bother practicing it? Yikes. So true.

benterix 3y ago

It might be. And as people get more and more lonely, the problem gets more serious, as statistically speaking the amount of empathetic interlocutors you meet decreases.